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23 her career. "She expressed an interest in being more involved, using her contacts in the community, giving us guidance about who the important people are," Pearson says. "You can't buy that expertise." Dash would become the public face of Trenton Makes Music. She would record the audio introduction on the project's website, and she would serve as master of ceremonies for the project's public events. She would also write the eponymous theme song, which she debuted last October at a Trenton Makes Music program at Mayo Concert Hall. Dash wasn't just in, she was all in. T HE PENTACOSTAL DOCTRINE enforced at the Trenton Church of Christ provided a rigid frame- work for Dash's girlhood. Her parents —Elizabeth, a nurse, and the Elder Abraham Dash — did not permit young Sarah to roam the streets unaccompanied or hang out with friends after school. Under her parents' strict supervision, she would attend classes, do her homework, take violin lessons, sing in the church choir, and worship the Almighty. Recalling the regimen of her early years, Dash quotes an old friend: "We would go to church on a Sunday," she says, "and come home on a Wednesday." All the while she continued to sing. At Trenton Central High School, Dash and her classmate Nona Hendryx teamed with Cindy Birdsong, who was from Camden, and Patti LaBelle, from Philadelphia. By 1962, Patti LaBelle and the Blue Belles had a Top 20 hit with "I Sold My Heart to the Junkman." Dash was 16 years old. "I'm all underage, and I got these adults, church people, fighting over whether I'm going to sing or not," Dash recalls. "And I'm sure my father had pressures from his church members: Cont. on page 26 Trenton Makes Timberlake Trenton's own Adam Blackstone (on bass) directed Justin Timberlake's 20/20 Experience Tour.

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